Sleeping Beauty (1959)

 Sleeping Beauty (1959)

6/10

Starring the voice of

Mary Costa

Bill Shirley

Eleanor Audley

Verna Felton

Barbara Luddy

 

Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman and Les Clark

 

Back in 1959, Walt Disney himself produced the Charles Perrault fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. This was long before Angelina Jolie donned the costume and gave us the origin story of the villain Maleficent in Maleficent (2014). When I was younger, in the early 90s, I always found this animation like a dud and didn’t enjoy the plot very much. Even seeing it now, I still feel Disney missed the mark with this movie. I recall my mother buying us a VHS of another adaptation of this fairy tale, which fared better than the one done by Disney himself. This was also the last fairy tale movie he produced.

The plot of Sleeping Beauty revolves around the same basic structure across the board. There is a young lady named Aurora, the daughter of King Stefan and Queen Leah. The couple had struggled with childlessness for years, and the birth of Aurora was a crowning moment, declared a holiday. Among the guests on this momentous day were the three good fairies, who came to lay their blessings on the child. One evil fairy, named Maleficent, was not invited. She was upset by this and laid a curse on Aurora—a curse that could only be broken by true love's first kiss.

The King and Queen, fearing for their daughter’s life, gave her to the fairies, who cared for her until she was grown. We watch as Aurora is unable to evade the curse and waits for the deliverance of her sleep, hoping for true love's first kiss to wake her.

Over the years, this 16th Disney animated movie has come to be seen as something of cultural significance—like a rite of passage for animated movies you have to see as a child. After seeing this, you can then move on to the new high-octane things that the Mouse House is dropping these days. I feel that, in the near future, all these Renaissance Disney classics will seem too tame for children of the future. With the ducking and diving of other Disney classics like Zootopia, or the intense battle of a father trying to save his son in Finding Nemo, animations like this one are losing their audience.

Even at the time of its release, this movie was not a box office masterpiece. It took many future re-releases before the movie turned a profit. In fact, the movie’s poor performance during its initial release led to a dark turn in Disney’s production company, resulting in layoffs. This movie’s production cost of $6 million was, at the time, the most expensive animated feature film ever made.

Like all Disney Renaissance classics, this movie, I believe, comes in the classic box set, which will be suitable for children to see. But seeing it again, I still get the same mixed feelings I had when I first saw it as a child.